Guest essay by Leo Goldstein
As WUWT readers have probably noticed, using Google or other general search engines to find reliable information on anything related to climate change has become almost impossible. The search results are dominated by alarmist sites and blogs, while dissenting voices are simply drowned out.
The main reason for this imbalance is simple: a huge amount of money is pumped into alarmist research and propaganda by the US and other Western governments. Tens of billions of dollars in research grants, state mandates and loan guarantees to “clean energy” companies, substantial percentage of universities’ budgets, direct government grants to environmental NGOs, and tax deductions for “charitable” donations feed this frenzy. Certain pension funds also explore “noble ways to lose money“ (of their members, not their directors) to benefit the cause. The NASA website became a purveyor of the alarmist stories. Large corporations, including maligned “fossil fuels interests,” are totally under the government’s heel, and not only refuse to support realist research, but actively contribute to the alarmism in various ways. Unprecedentedly, FEMA now wants states to include an “assessment of climate risk” in their five year preparedness plans as a condition for funding.
A large part of this money finds its way to formerly mainstream publications and Internet bloggers, creating a huge interlinked network, many nodes of which are highly ranked by Google and other general search engines. Some of the websites and pages in this network have misleading names or titles, including words and phrases that are expected from the right side of the debate. The skeptical science is an example. Thus, alarmist pages come out on top in almost every climate search.
Google effectively has a web search monopoly. Usually, I do not give much weight to claims that Google Search unfairly discriminates against X or Y. These complaints sound like sour grapes, and Google has too much to lose and too little to gain from such actions. But the case of climate change seems totally different. Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, talks like a fanatical alarmist. He really believes that the orthodox alarmist position is the scientific truth. In 2014, he said: “… we should make decisions in politics based on facts. And the facts of climate change are not in question anymore. Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people–they’re just, they’re just literally lying” (as quoted by Paul Driessen and Chris Skates) [1].
The Google PageRank of the WUWT homepage is only 3 out of 10. I would expect it to be 6-7, and no less than 5, based on WUWT’s popularity and comparing it to unrelated websites on other subjects. It is hard to say whether Google’s “truthiness” algorithm is already involved, or it will be the proverbial other shoe. In any case, I do not see an explanation for this ridiculously low ranking other than foul play on Google’s behalf. To be fair, the climate-related results from Bing are no better than those from Google.
What can we do about it? The Climate Search page allows you to search WUWT and other good resources, which are currently drowned out in the ocean of formerly mainstream media and alarmist blogs. In fact, I used it extensively to write this article. It should be useful for both novices and experienced participants in the climate dispute.
[1] Note this expression of condemning “people who oppose it [climate change]”. Eric Schmidt is an extremely smart man. But he repeats this ritual formula, and does not notice that it is he, together with Obama and Al Gore, who try to oppose climate change, sea rise, and other natural phenomena.
Use Bing! Use Bing! Use Bing!
First, the Google engine has been charged [ alleged ] with favoring its sponsors as well. Nothing came of it.
Second, you can do a side by side search with both engines and see different results. Bing supports all of the usual Boolean limiters. Last, the photos at the log in page are worth my suggested trial.
Full disclosure: I have no affiliation with Microsoft personally or financially.
Regards,
I work with Google often and with Google employees, and I have been an SEO professional for 15 years. Google search results are manipulated constantly. The PageRank of WUWT shouldn’t be 3, it should be at least 8 or 9. It is part of Google workers’ jobs, and it is trivial to manipulate search rankings manually, both objectively and subjectively.
There are countless other reports of manipulation of conservative sites and blogs. With Google’s longstanding policy of favoring inbound links from .edu and .gov blogs, they’ve effectively created their own hard-Left political search engine.
Excellent Information!
A little over a year ago, I put the following search terms into Google: “united states” “air pollution” graph +improving. The result was just 6 pages. The same search from Bing netted close to 64,000.
…I just tried it now and got 5 from Google and 164,000 from Bing.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=climate+change+skeptic+web+sites&gbv=2&oq=climate+change+skeptic+web+sites&gs_l=heirloom-hp.3…1629.10620.0.10771.38.24.3.11.6.0.171.2326.17j7.24.0….0…1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..6.32.2268.mZ1XNLlioqk
I googled ‘climate change skeptic sites and WUWT is #3 and ALL the other sites listed are anti-climate skeptic sites making fun of us! None of the well-known other sites show up at all on the first page and I am amazed that WUWT shows up at all.
Well, there is one search result they can’t hide:
https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+predictions+that+have+come+true&oe=utf-8&hl=en&sa=X&as_q=&nfpr=&spell=1&ved=0CAoQvwVqFQoTCLyjj4Xq6scCFYePPgodg_cD9A#newwindow=1&safe=off&hl=en&q=climate+change+predictions+that+didn%27t+come+true
What’s interesting is that other search engines, like yahoo, pile all of the lies at the top….
Google has been moving towards being your Intellectual Nanny. They admittedly will change rankings of sites based on what they believe is the “truth”. Read their published Knowledge Based Trust: Estimating the Trustworthiness of Web Sources http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03519
I have witnessed high rankings given to skeptic bashing sites that are filled with lies. I think now Google realizes it power it wants the public to see the truth according to Google. Searchers beware.
Excellent source for those looking for some confirmation bias
Thanks Ari, I have bookmarked defyccc.com for my climate related searches – I don’t trust google or yahoo. Thanks to Glenn999, I have also found ixquick which I will use as my default search engine. I’m more than happy to move away from google.
I quit using Google some time ago, and switched to Yahoo. Did this when they started the CAPTCHA and the error:
“Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network”
Which happens without unusual traffic if you repeat a lot of searches as I do.
If I search climate blog, I get WUWT third on google, and seventh on Bing.
Climate Depot also come up in the first ten for me when searching climate blog.
You wonder why Wikipedia pages rank so highly on Google, though. If Google is all about revenue, why rank a nonprofit site almost continually as No1 result?
“why rank a nonprofit site almost continually as No1 result?”
Probably because there are so many links to and from Wikipedia already. And the site really does have a lot of genuinely useful information. No doubt some have gamed a few political categories but on the whole Wikipedia is decent. All those citations and people linking back to Wikipedia push it quite high.
Rankings are pretty easy to game. All those reputation defender companies just push any bad news about you or your company onto the 3rd or 4th page by putting other things first. Tons of articles on how to improve your rankings.
I would be a little surprised if Google themselves intervened. More likely it is the zealots who are doing the footwork for the alarmists.
I’ve found the bias problem on other topics for years – if it’s environmental, the search can be totally useless. Looking for mineral information on asbestos was an example. I note it’s a bit better now on that topic. I guess if the first couple of hundred on the list are about what people already “know” about asbestos, no one is searching this stuff anymore so mineralogical data appears to have sneaked up into the first page. If some day alarmist climate ceases to be topical, it may shift around to a balance. My searches have evolved a bit using different verbiage to get better results. Maybe you have to put in ‘evil climate denier misinformation’ to get a realistic selection!
I typed in climate change and microwaves, and got 2,110,000 hits . The cite that came up first after the add was globalmicrowave.org/
The search page should have a list of the domains that it searches. Ideally then it would have a form for suggesting others, along with a way for people to comment on the utility of suggested sites (or for that matter the sites that are included). The idea of letting people vote on the inclusion of sites came to mind, but due to the likelihood of alarmists then voting up their sites I figured the site list would need to be manually maintained.
I’m not sure about search results but WUWT is closing in on a ‘half a billion views’. Currently at ~ 244,000,000 (two hundred and forty four million views). Looks like it will reach a ‘half a billion’ prior to the Paris stoned and unhinged.
WUWT clearly represents quality over quantity as is observed by the comments submitted. The rankings may be in part due to ‘networking’ among the better informed/intelligent. Could it be that once at WUWT there is no longer need to use search engine?
Using Google for “global warming” it takes until the 4th page of results to see any sceptic sites.
Wattsupwiththat.com used to be on the very first page, if not the very first link and I have no doubt that it has far more visitors than most of the other sites combined.
Also… On that 4th page, the very first sceptic website is this strange and curious site:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Global_warming
Tell me I am wrong, but this site reads like a caricature of what “deniers” believe. It reads just loony enough to convince anyone yet unconvinced that sceptics (or deniers) are nutcases.
This is the first “sceptical” link that any unwary Googlers will come across.
In any event, I believe that the way to win this isn’t with an alternate search engine that is only known to people already enlightened. The way to win is to fight back on Google’s ground. To make sure Watts & others are high in the rankings.
If Google is purposely suppressing and manipulating the rankings then that needs to be pointed out.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
This probably should be fixed, I will work on it.
You have to wonder how someone who is apparently smart enough to become chairman of Google can have such blind spots of idiocy. On the other hand looking at members of Congress and more than a few presidents it seems intelligence is not a prerequisite.
But Eric Schmidt is a business man, and he does not have a blind spot of idiocy. He sees very clearly an opportunity and has put down $2 billion dollars on the table expecting a high rate of return from Climate change.
Google search + climate change = conflict of interest.
So Google is in on the conspiracy as well?
This keeps getting funnier and funnier. Stephan Lewandowsky will be having a field day with this nonsense.
Mike S,
Are you really that credulous? It’s extremely naive to think that a company with the ability to manipulate information wouldn’t do exactly that.
That’s what the mainstream media does all the time. Why wouldn’t Google do the same thing?
[Invalid email address, David. ~mod.]
[Fake email address. ~mod.]
I miss Gopher and Veronica… kinda like a ‘grep’ search through actual research and raw data.
[Invalid email address. ~mod.]
Doing a search for climate predictions that didn’t come true has this as #1.
[Invalid email address. ~mod.]
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
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Hear, hear!
None of this is complicated or difficult to fix but I am not going to explain how to fix it here. Nor is this a conspiracy. It has to do with inbound links and page formatting.
Poptech,
No need to explain how to fix it. Just explain why WUWT is on page 3, instead of somewhere on the first page. Thanks.
Page 3 for what search term? <— This is what no one here understands. When you search for "WUWT" in Google does it show up on the first page? If so then that answers your question and proves there is no conspiracy. Google does not rank pages based on what you believe they should be ranked using any arbitrary search term.
“The Google PageRank of the WUWT homepage is only 3 out of 10. I would expect it to be 6-7, and no less than 5”
Google page rank is a vanity measure that is not updated by Google anymore. It can because when they last calculated it your site was a 3.
As already noted, sheer volume of links and the ‘domain authority’ of those links determines your ranking. As the most alarmist sites will regularly be collecting links from highly authoritative domains like NASA, various .gov domains, sites like the New York Times etc, you don’t have a chance against them. This is not necessarily conspiracy – anyone doing rocket science linked from NASA would be expected to rank highly, anyone who is linked from IRS.gov would be expected to rank well.
That said, Google does have manual reviewers for search results and they can use their own judgement, as well as following from ‘report’ links. And it’s possible for bad actors to link to a site from a bad neighbourhood in what is called ‘google bowling’ to associate a target site with a bad neighbourhood of spam or scam sites. This is not always easy to detect for the target, and I’m assuming wuwt doesn’t have a full time SEO specialist on board checking these things.
Despite what the CEO says personally, Google is in the business of collecting ad money from companies with deep pockets. As such much of their results are a popularity contest as dictated by the braying online mob. They purposely weight ‘brands’ higher because they see this as sorting out authority on topics. The fact that this also induces brands with deep pockets to bid on ads where their competition is high in organic search is just a happy side effect, or so they say.
If their is bad acting going on, I would more likely suspect alarmist activists and blogs then google itself. As a big public company I would doubt they care very much about sites like this, certainly not enough to engage a staffer to manually intervene in the results on the personal whim of the CEO.
Thanks. I stand corrected about the PageRank. Google public PageRanks were last updated in 2013. I doubt that WUWT was less popular then. The ‘manual reviewers’ and ‘google bowling’ might be the culprits. So, the main thrust and conclusions of the article remain valid.